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I have an upcoming website that will go live in about a month from now. The design and development has been going at a smooth pace so far. Since I don't program I have a developer make it for me. My start up is turning out pretty much how I would like it. My only dilemma is how can I get traffic to come and post on my website. But please put some light on what steps I can take to improve visitor participation by posting items for sale. Please share your thoughts.

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You haven't said how your idea is better or different than existing web sites. A domain name built with a free design app isn't even an idea, it's a place holder. – BMitch Jun 14 '11 at 11:18
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To put it another way, you just gave us the address to a plot of empty dirt and a "coming soon" sign and asked us how to convince people to visit your store. – BMitch Jun 14 '11 at 11:20

3 Answers

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Target a location for your launch. People taking the effort to sell want to go to where the buyers are. So to get momentum, you need to get lots of people in one location using your site. Having 500 people in one city makes it a successful market. Having 500 people scattered across 500 cities will be an instant failure.

Do not use fake data. Once you come across as a fraud, no one will trust the site.

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I'm not sure what you expect for suggestions here. If your site isn't better than those out there already, then it's worse because you're late to the party. In addition to craigslist, there are so many other copy cats doing this (lmgtfy.com/?q=used+college+book+store) not even counting word of mouth and school specific bulletin boards. – BMitch Jun 14 '11 at 12:29
up vote 1 down vote

This is the classic chicken and egg problem. You need users to post but people won't post if there are no users. This is the hardest customer development model to address. It takes either really deep pockets or an enormous network to pull it off. Many who have to tackle this issue and get the ball rolling do the “fake-it-til-you-make-it” approach. It will either work or fail tremendously based on your execution and ability to veil the content seeding. The other approach is service a single side of the market until you have a community and then offer the other side as an enhancement. For example build an app that keeps an inventory of users books. When you have 1,000 users of this service then add a classified feature to sale the books in their inventory. You switch from a single sided market to a double.

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up vote 1 down vote

This is mostly a matter of smart marketing.

You need so called "early adopters", or the people who will start using your service even though there are no other users. To achieve this, you need to provide a feeling of scarcity and a promise of reward.

Here is a strategy that might work:

  1. Create a splash page explaining benefits of your site, asking people to register for free private beta
  2. Offer some sort of reward for registering and posting an ad (i.e. a prize, or a free lifetime access or anything else normal users will have to pay for or fight for).
  3. Limit number of seats for private beta to..say 200, and show a big countdown on your splash page. This will create a sense of urgency & quality.
  4. Promote the private beta & drive users to your splash page
  5. When done, open for public

Hope this helps.

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